"Beauty pageants are toVenezuelawhat football is to Argentina or baseball to Cuba - a spectacle that allows people to forget their everyday woes. Yet at the Miss Venezuela competition last week, even the contestant from the capital Caracas had a gritty message for the audience, saying she wanted her country "to fight in the face of adversity".

Not even under the lights could the brunette model dodge the reality that Venezuelans are battling an economic crisis that threatens the legacy ofHugo Chávez and his "Bolivarian revolution"and which is coming to the boil as the overvalued exchange rate drains foreign reserves.""

The problems go beyond the currency. There is huge concern that President Maduro is not up to the task:

"One reason for that concern is lack of action by Mr Maduro's administration to face up to problems. Behind the scenes, his ruling Socialist party faces internecine fights between radical ideologues and pragmatists, a tug of war that has led to a stalemate which has only worsened the economic situation.

A devaluation, for example, would boost the local currency value of Venezuela's dollar oil receipts - the country's time-honoured solution to closing a fiscal deficit - and also remove the need for currency restrictions.

But doing so before the December 8 elections would damage Mr Maduro, who has to decide whether his administration "wants to be politically popular or economically sustainable," as Stratfor, the risk consultancy, puts it.

"We see little scope for President Maduro to re-engineer a new path for the economy of Venezuela," says Paolo Batori, Morgan Stanley's global head of sovereign strategy. He has "little flexibility for any diversion from the populist oil-financed government spending policies of his predecessor"."

Hard to see a happy ending to this story.

There is going to be a devaluation of the Bolivar. The only question is this: Will it happen before Cabrera hits one over the Green Monster or after?

"Beauty pageants are toVenezuelawhat football is to Argentina or baseball to Cuba - a spectacle that allows people to forget their everyday woes. Yet at the Miss Venezuela competition last week, even the contestant from the capital Caracas had a gritty message for the audience, saying she wanted her country "to fight in the face of adversity".

Not even under the lights could the brunette model dodge the reality that Venezuelans are battling an economic crisis that threatens the legacy ofHugo Chávez and his "Bolivarian revolution"and which is coming to the boil as the overvalued exchange rate drains foreign reserves.""

The problems go beyond the currency. There is huge concern that President Maduro is not up to the task:

"One reason for that concern is lack of action by Mr Maduro's administration to face up to problems. Behind the scenes, his ruling Socialist party faces internecine fights between radical ideologues and pragmatists, a tug of war that has led to a stalemate which has only worsened the economic situation.

A devaluation, for example, would boost the local currency value of Venezuela's dollar oil receipts - the country's time-honoured solution to closing a fiscal deficit - and also remove the need for currency restrictions.

But doing so before the December 8 elections would damage Mr Maduro, who has to decide whether his administration "wants to be politically popular or economically sustainable," as Stratfor, the risk consultancy, puts it.

"We see little scope for President Maduro to re-engineer a new path for the economy of Venezuela," says Paolo Batori, Morgan Stanley's global head of sovereign strategy. He has "little flexibility for any diversion from the populist oil-financed government spending policies of his predecessor"."

Hard to see a happy ending to this story.

There is going to be a devaluation of the Bolivar. The only question is this: Will it happen before Cabrera hits one over the Green Monster or after?